


Birds of a Feather

by abyssinianserengeti



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Emotional Manipulation, Killing people is kinda like chocolates and roses, M/M, Mentions of Rape, Serial Killer!Will, coarse language like woah, dark!Will
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-02
Updated: 2013-07-02
Packaged: 2017-12-16 21:21:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/866729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abyssinianserengeti/pseuds/abyssinianserengeti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for this <a href="http://hannibalkink.dreamwidth.org/2246.html?thread=4003526#cmt4003526">prompt</a> on the kinkmeme: Will is a serial killer. One day he stumbles across one of the Chesapeake Ripper's kills and is inspired. Hannibal is not flattered by this and tells him as much in his own gory display. Will gets a bit miffed and responds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Birds of a Feather

**Author's Note:**

> Full prompt: Will is the partner of another serial killer, who gets sent to jail for a crime unrelated to murder. Hesitant to kill under their usual MO, he decides to pay homage to the Ripper, resulting in an escalating serial killing spree where each is trying to one-up the other. But Will's partner gets released and everything stops. Hannibal is not happy about this - it was actually fun having someone playing on his level.

“Class dismissed.”

They begin to leave, filing out in pairs and packs. Some are gone before he even shuts off the projector, some linger, throwing him sly looks. Mr Will Graham isn’t oblivious. He knows which ones want him. He has as much (if not more) self-awareness as the next clown but it’s far better to keep up appearances and seem as dazed and unstable as possible. Who needs an alibi when he’s got a shoddy reputation that precedes him?

Never mind that there’s a serial killer on the Quantico campus and the last three female victims have all been taken his class.

Jack Crawford and the B.A.U. division have been chasing their tails, baffled. The perp’s been an anti-American immigrant. He’s been a fellow student. He’s been an ex-cop. He’s been an old paedophile. He’s been a wrongfully convicted suspect out for revenge. He’s been a total stranger.

He’s never been Will Graham and that suits Will Graham perfectly fine.

“Hi.” Speak of the devil. “I didn’t want to interrupt your class. Jack Crawford.”

Will plays up his neuroses, avoiding eye contact, fiddling with his glasses. Telltale signs of discomfort. He puts a waver in his voice and keeps his handshake loose.  
“We haven’t met,” Crawford goes on, his voice dropping just a little in volume. Textbook alpha male behaviour when confronted with a damaged submissive.

“I’ve heard of you,” Will understates, shuffling papers.

“The Evil Minds Museum,” Crawford laughs, “Actually, I was hear to get your opinion on the latest tragedy. I’m sure you’ve heard?”

Will stops moving, deliberately bites the inside of his cheek and looks vaguely in the direction of the seat Monica Sells had occupied until her murder two weeks ago.

“Am I a consultant, sir?”

“Uh no,” Crawford sounds apologetic.

“The Bureau not like my brand of crazy?” Will jokes, pulling a wry smile.

The FBI special agent squirms, “actually it’s just that we already have a criminal profiler we’ve called on to help with this case. A Dr Hannibal Lecter, perhaps you’ve heard of him?”

The name is familiar in an empty sort of way. He’s read it on the cover of a paper, or heard it mentioned in passing. It doesn’t ring any bells which alarms Will more than he cares to admit. A new set of eyes psychoanalyzing his kills feels extremely intrusive and dangerously unpleasant. Will doesn’t like to be pyschoanalyzed. He really doesn’t.

“I can’t say I have,” he says slowly, “but agent, if you don’t mind my asking, why do you need me, then?”

“Just want to get your opinion. After all, these girls were your students.”

“Teaching doesn’t require me to be sociable. I talk at them, not to them. They’re just rows sitting across from me. When I look up, I see the round glow of their faces, attentive or otherwise, like little portholes on a ship, glowing in the dark and bobbing on the vast, pitiless sea.”

Too sociopathic? Hmm.

“So you didn’t know any of the victims personally? No insight as to why they were targeted? Or why they might have been killed the way they were?”

“Sorry?”

Jack sighs, “The first, Victoria Sung, was impaled on a sword. The second, Venus Michelle, was dehydrated and starved to death. The third, Monica Sells, seemed to have been injected with lethal flesh-eating bacteria which caused organ failure. At each scene were left the words: Revelation 6:8 drawn in the victim’s blood.”

“Death by sword, famine and plague...A religious fanatic?”

“At first glance, it would seem so but, I don’t know, the shoe doesn’t seem to fit. It almost feels like a distraction."

Will projects his desire to end the conversation in a series of carefully plotted ticks. He brushes a hand through his hair, breathes out heavily through his nose, shuffles the papers again, pushes on his glasses, cricks his neck, wanders his eyes everywhere except at Jack and clenches and unclenches his fingers.

“I know you don’t like looking, Mr Graham, but any insight would be appreciated,” Crawford says, dropping his voice back to a soothing timbre.

“I think it was a simple matter of opportunity. I don’t know if it was anything personal,” he says through tightly gritted teeth.

Jack nods, takes the generous hints, and leaves. As soon as he turns his back, the tension leeks out of Will and he straightens his hunched shoulders. A brief memory floats into his mind like the vestiges of a particularly happy dream. Monica’s walking across campus, she sees the pigeons, feints lunging at them causing the entire flock to take to air in panic, then she nudges her friend and cackles, “ _bloody stupid birds, God, I want to wring their necks._ ”

It’s gone as quickly as it had come. He smells her blood in the air, can hear the shadows of her screams, can taste the salt of her tears. 

Will smiles.

*

“DUI, are you serious?” he picks up the remote and turns down the news until it’s a murmur in the background, the reporter mouthing soundlessly beside a blown up image of Monica’s face. It’s her FBI Trainee ID and she looks like the consummate professional. Her hair practically screams ‘confident, competent and creative.’ In big red letters (very unimaginative) is the caption:

PALE HORSEMAN PUNISHES AGAIN

_“I fucked up, Will.”_

He almost breaks the remote in two. “When are they letting you out?”

 _“I dunno,”_ Garrett Jacob Hobbs hesitates, _“I might have, maybe, fought with the officer a bit.”_

“You _what_?”

 _“What part of ‘under the influence’ don’t you understand,”_ the man grumbles.

Will stands and launches the remote against the far wall, where its crunch is less than satisfying. “What the hell are we going to do now, huh? You fucking asshole. You _fucking_ asshole. This only works if we take a fourth girl, you stupid fuck!”

_“Stop being such an OCD dickhead. We’ll just take the fourth after I get released!”_

“Which could we weeks, months! And you fought with an officer, idiot, the judge’s going to fuck you up just for that.”

 _“Aren’t you gonna post my bail?”_ He’s angry, _“I thought you’d post my bail!”_

Will throws up his hands and laughs, “They’re already investigating you. If I post your bail, then there’s a fourth victim straight after you get out, we’re both doomed!”

_“Aw, so you’re gonna just save your own neck are you, you son of a bitch, you dog. Gonna let me die –“_

“You’re not going to die in County, numbskull. Why could you not think for once? I mean, I do the scouting, the luring, the set up, the clean up and all you have to do if stay out of trouble and you fucked even that up.” Will mutters to himself, “Idiot.”

_“Well if you’re such a big shot why don’t you kill a fourth one on your own yeah? Sounds like you don’t even need me, dammit. Oh right...I remember. Why don’t you kill any of them? BECAUSE YOU’RE A FUCKING COWARD, WHO’S GONNA FUCKING LEAVE ME HERE TO ROT!”_

“I HAVE DONE EVERYTHING FOR YOU! Let you take the girls you’d never get yourself. Baited them and tied them up in a fucking bow for you. And let you fuck them and let you do whatever the hell you liked to them. And let you kill them because you’re just that much of a sadist, you psychopath.”

_“Oh, you’re calling me a psychopath?”_

“I never wanted to kill them!”

_“What, only follow them home and play with their little minds and watch them squirm and destroy themselves. Like that’s not even sicker. At least I made my torture quick. You pulled yours out for weeks and weeks, getting inside their heads with your fucking empathy.”_

He growls, throwing his body back on the couch. Some of the dogs lift their heads from their beds, curious. One comes up to sniff at his dangling hand. “You’ve screwed up the timeline. God, I’m going to download so much porn onto your laptop.”

_“Don’t you dare get a virus!”_

“And don’t you dare argue with the judge, you big idiot,” Will scrubs a hand over his face. It smells like dog breath. “Alright, here’s what I’m going to do. While you’re stuck in purgatory, I’m going to find a fourth victim. Just as we planned. In one month. It’ll be female, one of my students and she’ll disappear off campus just like the others.”

_“Are you seriously not going to bail me out?”_

“Just shut up, would you?”

 _“Fucker,”_ Garrett mumbles.

“Whatever. It’ll be the same victim profile but I’ll use a completely different MO. Not leave the words in blood. Maybe strangle her or something. Or shoot her. And no rape, obviously. Confuse Jack Crawford a little. They’ll think it’s a copycat, or maybe it’s the same guy who got sick of the pale horseman of death thing. And it’ll take the heat off you, with your pretty damn good alibi as alibis go.”

_“So you’re doing me a favour?”_

Will smirks, “That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”

_“You’re actually gonna go the whole distance? Kill someone, I mean?”_

He toys between quipping something very clever and simply hanging up. Eventually, too much time has passed for him to say anything except, “Well I’ve got no choice have I?”

By the time they say their final goodbyes and promise to scrub each others mouths out with soap, Will’s mile-a-minute brain has already come up with a plan. He turns his attention back to the news, drawing long strokes up Winston’s back, pausing every once in a while to scratch between his ears. Their doing a follow-up piece on the history of serial killers in Virginia. Even without volume, Will can tell they’re talking about the only known free killer still active – the Chesapeake Ripper.

There’s a visual warning about graphic and disturbing images, then they flash his recent kills on the screen. Just enough to imply the butchering but still complying to free to air television regulations.

What better way to have the Bureau pulling at their hair?

He can see Crawford’s face in his mind; can see deep lines of anxiety and bags like balloons under his eyes. Is the Chesapeake Ripper the Pale Horseman? Or is the Chesapeake Ripper copying the Pale Horseman? Or is the Pale Horseman copying the Chesapeake Ripper? Or is it someone else entirely?

How many killers? One, two or, God forbid, three?

*

Five weeks later, Hannibal Lecter reads the newest Freddie Lounds article.

He is not amused.


End file.
